


Can’t Bribe the Door on Your Way to the Sky

by theshipsfirstmate



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: F/M, angst fest 2k17, felicity introspection, mid-5x19
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-29
Updated: 2017-04-29
Packaged: 2018-10-25 06:14:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10758399
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theshipsfirstmate/pseuds/theshipsfirstmate
Summary: mid-5x19, Felicity’s thoughts during the scene in the loft.“When it comes down to it, Oliver’s argument has always been that he couldn't be a hero and be with her. It's infuriating and heartbreaking that now, as the tables have turned, he won't let her be either.”





	Can’t Bribe the Door on Your Way to the Sky

_Title from “[Sign of the Times](http://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.vevo.com%2Fwatch%2Fharry-styles%2Fsign-of-the-times-%28audio%29%2FUSSM21700436&t=NmEwYzhhMDFkNGI1Mjk4NThmNjE1YjJmNzBmYTNhZDUxZDMyZjRiMiwwdUNjbjZYWA%3D%3D&b=t%3AiAw4tJIAalN1OvhWtUFPsQ&p=http%3A%2F%2Ftheshipsfirstmate.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F160108745294%2Farrow-fic-cant-bribe-the-door-on-your-way-to-the&m=1)” by Harry Styles._

**Can’t Bribe the Door on Your Way to the Sky**

_“One of the reasons I fell in love with you…”_

Felicity hears herself say it, and she knows it isn’t the first time.

She’s always reminding him, in their darkest hours, about the virtues that made her love him, long before (and long after) she should have. She always tells him in the moments when there’s nothing left to say.

Telling him now feels a little like twisting the knife, only she can’t figure out which one of them has the blade in their back. Telling him here, in the home they used to share, feels like some kind of twisted bookend. None of it really matters. Oliver’s returned to that mindset where he acts like he’s forgotten, or like he never really knew in the first place. She knows part of that is Prometheus’ undoing, and part of that is who he’s always been.

Over the years, she’s watched him shove down every kind of emotion for the sake of being the hero he thinks he has to be. But Felicity can’t do it that way. She’s never forgotten, not for a second, and she’s never tried. At the core, it’s what her mission is built on: the love they shared, the purpose they found together, the city that was worth saving just because he was by her side, protecting it.

Even now that they’re not together, she still had some tiny hope that when the time came, he’d back her play. And she hates herself a little for how disappointed she is when it just isn’t true.

He’s so stubborn. Maybe Helix’s plan isn’t the best option, but they’ve come at things sideways like this before, and they’re running out of time. She can do this, and even if she can’t, she’s already jumped off the cliff. He’s the one who gets left behind this time, he can sit in the bunker and wring his hands and worry about all the things he never got to say.

_“You, more than anyone else,”_ he grates out, with a look in his eye that Felicity remembers but hasn’t been privy to in months, _“have seen the toll that it has taken on me.”_

When it comes down to it, Oliver’s argument has always been that he couldn’t be a hero and be with her. It’s infuriating and heartbreaking that now, as the tables have turned, he won’t let _her_ be either one. If there were any measurable bit of her heart left to break, it would have gone at the look on his face when he practically begs her not to go. But there isn’t, and so she steels herself.

She knows he hasn’t forgotten what it’s like to love her, even if he never brings it up in big declarative ways, even if he never trots it out as part of the pep talk, as seems to be her m.o. Still, she knows, because every time their eyes meet for too long, she can see it there, that same longing that makes her stomach ache. But they’ve mostly spent their time since last summer looking anywhere but each other and Oliver just missed it, the metamorphosis that occurred as she grew an icy shell and rebuilt the walls he had spent four years tearing down.

She’s someone else now. He didn’t notice.

No one did, Felicity made sure of that. Curtis was working on his marriage and Thea was never around and her mother went back to Vegas and Digg was busy with an ARGUS-head wife and a toddler. Once Rory left, there really wasn’t anyone to see her, let alone notice, but it’s Oliver’s blindness that hurts the most.

He tells her now that he doesn’t want her to sell her soul. She can count on her hands the number of people in this world who may believe there’s anything left to hock. She’s left pieces of it scattered around the globe. Lian Yu. Nanda Parbat. Havenrock. Russia. The street of Star City. What’s left likely wouldn’t fetch much of an asking price.

Still, he looks at her with pleading eyes and she wants to scream.

_“You were willing to sell your soul to destroy a threat that I created.”_

Felicity won’t realize it until later, but that line from him, the disbelief that laces around those words, is what ultimately fuels her determination to help carry out Helix’s mission. How dare he question her dedication to their cause, to the city they’ve worked for five years to save?

And besides, doesn’t he know by now?

Does he really not understand that she’s already sold her soul for him, maybe ten times over? After everything they’ve been through – life, death, resurrections and rebirths – doesn’t he know by now what she’s willing to sacrifice to makes things right? If anyone has shadow on their conscience, a list of wrongs to atone for, doesn’t he know that it’s her? She tells him so, even though her voice starts to shake. _“How could I be any different?”_

That special brand of reckless, selfless heroism is what makes him who he is. And it’s shaped her the same way. She tells him so, even though she doesn’t mean to.

_We’re the same now,_ is what she’s really saying. _Let me show you how much_.

It’s too electric, an emotional third rail they haven’t come close to touching in months, and she almost flinches. Even after trying and failing spectacularly with other people, even after suffering a few more of the kinds of tragedies that only happen to people like them, they still can’t face the spectre of what used to be, the smoky entrails of the fire that once burned between them. And Felicity thinks it would be even worse, perhaps, to look too closely and find it still burning.

_“I can’t,”_ Oliver tells her, and it’s nothing she hasn’t heard before. Some more vitriolic part of her just wanted him to know what it feels to fall for it. But they’re so far past that now. This conversation would have been a different one a few years ago. 

It would have been about his protectiveness, that way he used to stand close, towering over her to say “No,” back when he still thought physical intimidation would get him somewhere. At some point along the line, Felicity recalls, he stopped worried about her getting hurt and started worrying about the damage he’d already inflicted.

Even now, every part of this is so rooted in his own pain that it almost, _almost_ makes her second guess the whole thing, and the self-loathing from earlier bubbles back up. She lets her nervous, righteous energy metabolize it into confidence and squares her shoulders under Oliver’s watchful gaze. She can’t look at him now without seeing him on that night he limped back to them from Prometheus’ captivity, with the last of his humanity seared away. She can’t forget the ringing in her ears that made it hard to make out his damaged voice, how the tips of her fingers burned to soothe across the permanent damage on his chest. When he said he was done for good, Felicity’s throat was on fire but her mind was made up. He’s not the only one who gets to make sacrifices.

She can’t stop Helix, anymore than she can stop the desperate gnawing in her gut. God knows, she’s tried. And one of the qualities she admires most about him, _one of the reasons she fell in love with him,_ is one of the reasons she has to follow through. She wishes that declaration would be enough to make Oliver understand, that the volumes of history between them and the look in her eyes would be enough to sway his support. But when he says he can’t let her go, she fists her hands into tight, painful balls and reminds them both that he no longer has the power to ask her to stay.

_“You’ll have to stop me.”_

He nods, like it’s what he expected, and then she’s gone.


End file.
